Sublime

As he saw it, the people of the Mediterranean built their diets around plant foods and seafood—vegetables, legumes, fish, olive oil, grains, and nuts.

While veganism is a waste of valuable biomass (only ruminants—that is cattle, sheep, and goats—can digest such cellulosic plant tissues as straw and stalks), high-level carnivory has no proven nutritional benefits: it certainly does not add any years to life expectancy, and it is a source of additional environmental stress. Meat consumption in Japa

percent increase (5 to 10 grams more per day) is sufficient. Finally, the diet should be free of animal proteins (red meat, white meat, cheese) with the exception of proteins from fish, but relatively high in vegetable proteins (legumes, nuts, etc.) to minimize the former’s negative effects on diseases and maximize the latter’s nourishing effects.

But, there’s good news: if there’s anything the past few years have shown us, it’s that genes are not destiny—they merely predict what the Standard American Diet will do to you.

As a person’s diet includes more whole plant foods and fewer animal products, the risk of having suboptimal levels or even deficiencies of vitamin B12, zinc, and DHA may increase.

However, other naturopaths decisively disagree. The founder of naturopathy, Dr. Benedict Lust, called for "the elimination of ... habits such as ... meat eating." Similarly, Henry Lindlahr, M.D., whose work has been widely read in naturopathic colleges, defined naturopathy as favoring a "strict vegetarian diet."

weight. Research has shown that humans gravitate toward eating a specific weight-based quantity of food each day. In one such study, subjects were allowed to feed freely on vegetable-and-pasta salad. On one occasion, the salad was 80 percent pasta and 20 percent vegetables; on another occasion, it was the reverse: 80 percent vegetables and 20 perce

The most profound difference between the two studies was also the most fundamental, for a diet study: the food that the monkeys ate.